Bread Lines in the US

It happened in the US before. It’s happening again in various ways at a time when perhaps harder than ever hard times may be just beginning.

First some background and related thoughts.

The Great Depression of the 1930s in the US followed prosperity marred by excesses in the 20s. The October 1929 stock market crash changed everything, ordinary people hit hardest.

Earlier goods times left out America’s underclass. Prosperity in the 1920s didn’t include most Blacks, other people of color, a new immigrant generation, poor southern sharecroppers and tenant farmers, nor many others in the US nationwide.

Throughout its history, America, Land of Opportunity has always been overshadowed by inequality between the haves and have-nots.

Unemployed men standing in line outside a depression soup kitchen in Chicago 1931. (Public Domain)

In 1962, Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” exposed the nation’s dark dark side enough for Jack Kennedy to ask White House Council of Economic Advisor chairman, Walter Heller, to do something about it.

Following JFK’s state sponsored assassination in November 1963, Lyndon Johnson (on January 8, 1964) “declare(d) unconditional war on poverty in America.”

It fell way short of addressing the extent of the problem nationwide. Today, Washington’s bipartisan criminal class is going the other way — marginalizing the rights and wealth of ordinary people so privileged ones can be richer and more powerful.

Almost 60 years ago, Harrington said the following:

“In morality and in justice, every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering.”

“But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America.”

It didn’t happen in the 1960s. Today, things are on a slippery slope toward becoming a ruler/serf/totalitarian society that’s more intrusive, unsafe and unfit to live in than earlier — what only a grassroots national convulsion can have any chance to stop and shift things in a positive direction.

In times like now, reality hits home hardest when many US workers above the poverty line are added to its underclass.

It happened during the Great Depression. It appears to be happening again now.

While growing mass unemployment won’t be a permanent state, what will follow when current crisis conditions end?

Will the US return to pre-COVID-19 conditions or is permanent transformation underway that will change the lives of ordinary Americans irreparably?

As explained in an earlier article, crises are times when ruling authorities convince people to sacrifice personal freedoms for greater security — not realizing that both will be lost.

Ruling authorities take advantage of times like now by instituting draconian policies they’re unable to introduce during normal times without risking mass rebellion.

The US is permanently at war abroad against invented enemies, what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

Most people are unaware that what’s happening abroad is ongoing at home by other means.

Post-9/11, human and civil rights were sharply curtailed. Enormous amounts of wealth were transferred from ordinary people to the nation’s privileged class.

A secretive military, industrial, national security state threatens everyone everywhere — a scheme for unchallenged global dominance by eliminating whatever stands in the way of achieving this diabolical objective.

Anyone challenging what’s going on risks being treated as a national security threat, including investigative journalists like Julian Assange and whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for exposing US wrongdoing.

Speech, press, and academic freedoms in the US are more greatly threatened than ever before, most people none the wiser.

The US needs enemies at home and abroad to advance its agenda so they’re invented to justify what’s unjustifiable.

The Global War on Terror is the greatest hoax in modern times – along with the no-peace/Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Big Brother is real watching everyone. The nation I grew up in no longer exists. One-party rule with two extremist right wings today threatens virtually everything just societies hold dear.

In my 9th decade, I may never be around enough to know how things turn out longer-term.

Will ordinary people be transformed into serfs to serve the interests of the rich and powerful?

Will America be consumed by its arrogance and hubris? Will it destroy planet earth and its life forms?

America was never beautiful when I was young. Today its ruling class may enslave the majority, eliminate nonbelievers, or kill us all by its rage to dominate unchallenged.

Image on the right: An impoverished American family living in a shanty, 1936 (Public Domain)

Pre-1930s poverty in the US became far greater after the 1929 stock market crash. Many in the middle class and some high-income families experienced it for the first time.

The American dream became a national nightmare for the great majority in the country.

Unemployment increased from 3% to 25%. Today it may go much higher.

In the 1930s, some US cities experienced up to 80% unemployment because of lost manufacturing and construction activity — dropping 54% and 78% respectively.

With growing millions of unemployed nationwide, breadlines are becoming the new normal, including near Trump’s Florida white house.

“(A) brutal new hunger crisis is emerging among laid-off workers that has begun to overwhelm the infrastructure that normally takes care of the needy,” Bloomberg reported.

Some hunger in America facts:

According to Feeding America before COVID-19 emerged, “1 in 7 people struggle(d) with hunger in the US.”

Millions of families with children are food insecure, not sure of obtaining enough food to get by.

Households with children are most vulnerable. The problem affects virtually “every community in the country” in urban and rural areas.

Many food insecure households don’t qualify for food stamps because of large-scale cuts to the program approved by Dems and Republicans.

Food banks and other hunger relief programs support them as much as possible.

Hunger affects young and old, including the underemployed, especially when teetering on possible unemployment.

Millions of US households struggle daily with tough choices — between feeding their families, paying rent or servicing mortgages, seeking medical help when ill, heating homes in winter, and finding a way to handle other essential needs.

Pre-Covid-19, Feeding America’s south Florida director said her operation fed over 700,000 people in four counties, including wealthy Palm Beach County.

Now “growth is exponential,” she stressed, a three-fold increase in funding needed to feed the hungry in south Florida alone.

Local food banks and pantries had no contact from the Trump Organization, the White House, or DJT’s Mar-a-Lago — despite multiple requests for help from Feeding America.

With hunger, unemployment and poverty growing exponentially in the US, how will ordinary people cope if harder than ever hard times are long-lasting?

Things are developing into a far greater crisis than during the Great Recession of 2008-09.

Feeding America and other food banks are hard-pressed by inadequate funding at a time of burgeoning need nationwide.

US policymakers and major media scared most people to death over COVID-19. When lockdowns, shelter in place, and social distancing end, their lasting effects will remain.

When perfect storms erupt, their effects are long-lasting after calm returns.

This storm may have considerable upside before subsiding, including possible multiple waves of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Likely economic and financial pain will hit ordinary Americans hardest, along with likely further erosion of human and civil rights.

Once policies are in place, they’ll likely be hard to reverse short of national rebellion.

What’s unfolding today may be looked back on ahead as a time when the nation entered the abyss of lost rights and well-being for the majority of its people.

Perhaps things will never be the same for them in their lifetimes. An unacceptable new normal may become the new status quo.

With most Americans living from paycheck to paycheck, sharply rising unemployment may cause an unprecedented level of long-lasting deprivation in the country, and its harmful effect on human and emotional health.

None of what’s unfolding should have happened. If the nation was run by government of, by, and for everyone equitably, Americans would be in good hands to deal effectively with whatever situations arise.

Sadly, polar opposite is true. COVID-19 isn’t the great crisis of our time, not by a long shot.

It’s government of, by, and for the super-rich and their cronies, by scheming self-serving politicians.

US governance is composed largely of white men who operate extrajudicially — who lie, connive, misinterpret and pretty much do things ad libitum in discharging their duties as they see fit for themselves and deep-pocketed funders.

It’s a nation of men, now laws, equity or justice. As unacceptable as things have been pre-COVID-19, they’re likely to get much worse ahead.

About the author:

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]
His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

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